Every year at Relish Careers, we question our user base about their experience with the campus recruitment process. We use this input to optimize the user experience on our website and prioritize creating new app capabilities. We also use the information we measure to deepen our knowledge of the MBA recruitment process, and we want to give some of the observations from the survey with our mates. As one of the top MBA Colleges in Ahmedabad, SKIPS not only caters to the needs of the industry, but also pays heed to the overall growth of students.

About the Respondent 

This study's audience is a diverse cross-section of students from top U.S. and foreign graduate business schools. 79% of respondents are registered in full-time MBA programs. In comparison, the remaining 21 percent are enrolled in part-time and corporate programs and other specialized business master's degree programs (accounting, finance, etc.). As far as demographics are concerned, our respondents' average age is 28.7 years; women account for 38.8 percent of respondents, and 30.6 percent of respondents are international students.

When, Where, How Long MBAs Look for Jobs

The MBA recruitment process has a reputation for being a lengthy and often tortuous process, and the findings of our survey have mainly verified that this reputation is well deserved. Experienced MBAs also advocate an early start to the recruitment process. It seems like most of the first-year MBAs get the message: more than half of the respondents (54 percent) in our survey began their recruitment process by the end of September, while just t16 percent waited for their second semester to start searching for an internship.

Second-years reported an even earlier timetable. Almost two-thirds (64 percent) began the search by the end of September—and much as their first-year counterparts, only one in six (16.9 percent). Second-year students rested until the second semester of their second year to start searching for a career. How did the late start impact the recorded satisfaction of the respondents with the recruitment process? In this article, we'll answer that question a little later. 

This inconsistency is partially explained by the fact that most of our respondents are full-time students. Still, even a full course load did not deter individual students from devoting a healthy portion of their weekly schedule to pursuing a placement or a career. One in seven respondents (13.6 percent) said they spent more than 10 hours a week on recruitment; two-thirds (66 percent) spent between 4 and 9 hours on recruitment in the typical week, and one in five (20.4 percent) said they spent less than three hours a week on recruitment. Have these casual recruiters come to regret wasting too little time for a job? Again, talk about that later.

SKIPS' is the best business school which continuous activities are focused on bridging the difference between employer standards and student employability.

At the top of time management, MBAs need to make other significant choices on handling the recruitment process. For example, each student must determine how to manage on-and off-campus recruitment activities; on-campus employers are more comfortable to reach and have a more organized approach, but they are dwarfed by the number of opportunities available in the massive but extremely decentralized off-campus arena. Much of the students in our study want a mixed approach—less than 1 in 4 choose to explore on-campus employers only (7%) or off-campus employers only (15 percent).

The remaining three-quarters (78 percent) targeted at least some employers of each form during their recruitment process. The distribution is marginally biased towards off-campus recruitment in our numbers, which is likely to reflect that many candidates are hiring partly or solely on-campus appear to integrate more off-campus openings into their priority list gradually. 

Individual students' recruitment experience often varies significantly based on the business or the recruitment route they follow. It is valid both in terms of the timelines described above and the effects that each student sees. We asked our respondents to share their desired industry (where they originally intended to work) and their real sector (where they ended up getting a job or internship). Consulting was the most prominent first preference among our respondents (31 percent), followed by tech (18 percent), CPG (16 percent), healthcare (11 percent), private equity (7 percent), and investment banking (7 percent).

 Even MBAs don't even get what they want, and about a third of our surveyed students (32.3 percent) didn't make a career or an internship in their chosen field. Given its success and intensely competitive job environment, the sector with the most defections should come as no surprise: more than 50% of the students initially involved in private equity took a role in another industry. 

What Divides Happy Career Seekers from The Other

In addition to questions about the recruitment process and background, we also asked applicants how they feel about the process in general—were they happy, sad, or ambivalent about their MBA recruitment experience in the past year? Even though MBA recruitment is frequently characterized as a "firehose of opportunity" because of the number of interested employers, our survey findings suggest that this is far from guaranteeing that applicants will be happy with their recruitment exposure. 

What were the primary determinants of candidate happiness? 

We cross-referred to the candidate's satisfaction with the data we received on the recruitment of deadlines and targeted employers, and we find some final findings.

One of the decisive determinants of candidate satisfaction: the month in which each respondent began hiring. Seventy-three percent of applicants who started hiring in August or earlier were pleased with their recruitment experience; less than half (44 percent) of those who waited until September or later to begin recruiting were satisfied with their experience.

It is a striking piece of hard evidence to support strong anecdotal support for early recruitment by recruiters and MBA alumni guiding Relish Careers webinars and other newspapers.

More time = More Happiness

Candidates who spend more time recruiting were, therefore, more likely to be satisfied with the result. Applicants who have spent 15 or more hours a week on recruitment are the most comfortable, and those who have spent 3 hours or less are the least likely to be pleased with their recruitment results. And while not everyone can combine a 15-hour recruitment workload with a full-time college schedule, the evidence suggests that more is more comfortable. Students can expect to disburse an average of at least an hour a day on recruitment activities over the five-to-six-month recruitment process.

PGDM Course Structure at the SKIPS is a Biennial!

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